Architecture sights in Venice
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A
Palazzo Grimani
Hang a right off Ruga Giuffa, and you’ll wind up in ancient Rome by way of Renaissance Venice and Tuscany. Closed to the public for 27 years, this palace has finally been restored to the eye-blinking grandeur initiated by Doge Antonio Grimani, whose reign was brief (1521–23) but his legacy lavish. The Grimani family were Renaissance trendsetters: they’d collected Graeco-Roman archaeological curiosities since before they became cool in the 14th century, and some of their best pieces can be glimpsed today in the Museo Correr. To make their house a suitable setting for such splendours, the Grimani went all out: floors paved with dizzying polychrome marble patterns, the…
reviewed
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B
Ca’ Dario
Grand Canal palaces rank among the world’s most prime real estate, except for the perfectly gorgeous 1487 Ca’ Dario. Its striking multicoloured marble facade casts a mesmerising reflection in the Grand Canal, captured by no less than Claude Monet – but there’s a catch. Starting with the daughter of its original owner, Giovanni Dario, an unusual number of its owners have met mysterious or miserable ends, lost fortunes and/or become frightfully ill, which local gossips claim was enough to dissuade Woody Allen from buying the place in the 1990s. The former manager of The Who and then owner of the building committed suicide there, and one week after renting the place for a ho…
reviewed
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C
I Gesuiti
Giddily over the top even by rococo standards, this gaudy, glitzy 18th-century Jesuit church is difficult to take in all at once, with a staggering spaceship of a pulpit and undulating marble walls. The church is lavishly decorated with white-and-gold stucco, white-and-green marble floors, and marble flourishes filling in any blank space. Gravity is provided by Titian’s uncharacteristically dark, gloomy Martyrdom of St Lawrence, on the left as you enter the church. Also playing against type here is Tintoretto’s Assumption of the Virgin, in the northern transept. This image is the antithesis of his dark images in the Scuola Grande di San Rocco, showing the Virgin on he…
reviewed
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D
Fondaco dei Tedeschi
Stamps are the main commodity traded near the ancient well in the sombre courtyard of this former fondacho (trading house), where Venice’s central post office was installed in 1937. But imagine how this place must have looked during its 13th- to 17th-century heyday as the Wall Street of Venice’s German community, before the creeping damp destroyed the exterior frescoes by Giorgione and Titian – only a few fragments remain in the Ca’ d’Oro. The traders here drove a hard bargain: when Giorgione and Titian showed up to collect their payment of 150 ducats for the work, they were told their work was worth only 130 ducats. Incensed, they insisted on an independent app…
reviewed
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E
Mulino Stucky
The striking neo-Gothic hulk of the best-known factory complex on the island, the Mulino Stucky, was built in the late 19th century and employed 1500 people. It shut in 1954, and languished along the lagoon until 2000, when it was narrowly saved from the wrecking ball by the Hilton Hotel chain. The Molino Stucky Hilton has 380 rooms, a conference centre and a fabulous lounge by the rooftop pool. The original facade has been preserved and it’s beautifully lit at night – who knew a factory could be so romantic?
reviewed
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F
Palazzo Zenobio
A gilded 1690 palace that formerly housed a school for Venice’s Armenian community recently opened its doors to scholars and guests for a nominal fee. Accommodation is spare but the palace’s trompe l’œil frescoed ceilings are splendid, and its overgrown formal garden among Venice’s largest and loveliest.
reviewed
